Twist, but No Shout

The Fed takes the safe policy tack even as economic outlook worsens. Saving their bullets.

Ben Bernanke has a lot to learn from the corporate world. In a well-worn routine preceding every corporate earnings season, chief financial officers lower "guidance" about the quarter's results, so the numbers can "beat expectations" when they're reported and produce a lift to the stock price. So the companies are rewarded for doing no more -- or even less -- than what was expected initially.

The Federal Reserve chairman wound up having to do just the opposite. The central bank was "too...